


When Namikaze Minato Changed the World

by purpleSquiggles



Series: How a Little Respect and Care Changed the World [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Completely Minato's POV, F/M, How Do I Tag, Pre-Relationship, Written in an experimental style the author has not used before!, do not copy to another site, how exciting right?, it's 12:30 am, until it's not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25950319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleSquiggles/pseuds/purpleSquiggles
Summary: It was completely by accident, but completely in his nature to do so anyway.And the ANBU will never forget it.
Relationships: Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Kushina, Namikaze Minato & Team Minato, Namikaze Minato & Uzumaki Kushina, Namikaze Minato/Uzumaki Kushina
Series: How a Little Respect and Care Changed the World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883431
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	When Namikaze Minato Changed the World

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, cannon was a nice idea (mostly)
> 
> But this is my show now
> 
> In all seriousness, you may have noticed that this is part of a series! You may have also noticed that this fic is complete. The main body of this series is actually Naruto-centric, so you can consider this body of work and the other one chapter work that will be posted shortly to be backstory and context! Neither of them are _necessary_ to read beforehand per say, but they _will_ help set a nice backdrop for later. 
> 
> This is also a new style of writing for me that I'm trying out, but if you don't much like it, no worries! The multi-chapter fic won't have the same repetitive style, I'm testing the waters using the style below as more of a tool to drive home an interesting and impactful summary that you can be engaged in despite how boring restating the obvious can tend to be.
> 
> This work is not betaed as of yet, so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  
> If I forgot to put something in the tags (and I'm almost positive I did) please let me know!
> 
> Enjoy

When Namikaze Minato was twelve years old, he was whacked up the back of the head with awe and respect when the girl from Uzushiogakure stormed the class and boldly claimed she would be the next Hokage.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was thirteen, he watched the girl from Uzushiogakure—who he  _ now _ knew was named Uzumaki Kushina—beat down some punk kid their age  _ and _ said punk kid’s older brother for being jerks and getting all up in her business, like total morons. He couldn’t help but feel like jumping in to fight with her wouldn’t be much appreciated, or very fair in all honesty, so he sat back and watched with wide eyes and a quirked grin. 

She yelled at him for it not long later, when she caught him in his tree. Too bad he was by far too tongue twisted to tell her he thought she was badass and thoroughly enjoyed watching her trounce those noticeably incompetent boys. ...Or that he thought her hair was seriously very pretty. He’d try again some other time.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ still _ thirteen, he pulled himself together enough to go and attempt to explain himself to one highly badass kunoichi called Uzumaki Kushina, when he discovered her kidnapping. He tracked her easily by the hair she'd thought to leave in a trail behind her, which had him feel very impressed at her ingenuity. And irrationally guilty at the repetitive pain that pulling her hair out the way she had must have caused.

He took down her kidnappers with extreme prejudice and tied them up before carefully lifting one angry and hurt Uzumaki Kushina. On the way back to Konoha, he found it was surprisingly easy to hold a conversation when the other conversing party didn’t immediately assume he was going to be inherently hostile. The more you know. 

(Also that Uzumaki-san would blush almost as red as her hair, if and when he went on an accidental tangent about how badass he thought she was and how gorgeous he  _ knew _ her hair was.  _ That _ was a good feeling. He’d have to thank his sisters for cluing him in on speaking his mind honestly to her later.)

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ basically _ fourteen, he learned that Kushina-chan—because she  _ wanted _ him to call her that, he can still hardly believe it sometimes—was the current jinchuriki of the Kyuubi no kitsune.

Nothing changed after that. He didn’t know why it surprised her.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ actually _ fourteen, he discovered that Kushina-chan was holding out on him  _ this entire time _ . He demanded that she, the  _ actual fuuinjutsu prodigy and master, _ teach him everything she knew about sealing immediately. She demanded they get on with their spar and that he buy her first round of ramen at her favourite place afterwards—as well as make it a regular thing—and he would have himself a deal.

Minato would have signed it in blood if she’d asked.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was fifteen, he realised that everyone was right about crushes being fun and simultaneously the worst thing ever.

He was  _ never _ going to let Kushina-chan find out. He would take this to his grave.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ still _ fifteen, he was one of the first to hear that Uzushiogakure had fallen and immediately sprinted to Kushina’s apartment. He found her curled in a ball, tugging on her hair, screaming and  _ sobbing _ in anger and pain and mourning. He couldn’t fault her for that. She must have felt like her life was falling apart around her. It hurt him to watch her suffer like that, and he could only imagine the painful intensity of what she was feeling.

He carefully pried her hands away from her hair, cleaned her face up gently, and held her chest to chest so she could tuck her face into his neck and shoulder, his arms securely around her. On more than one occasion that night, she pulled out of their embrace just enough to make sure, it seemed, that he was really there. He made sure to whisper some reaffirming words and wipe the tears from her face.

It surprised him when in one such moment, she reached back to him and wiped tear tracks off of  _ his _ face. He hadn’t even realised he’d been crying quietly with her. When she finally cried herself to sleep in his arms, he stayed awake to keep watch and plan how he would help Kushina-chan support herself when she woke up again.

He decided he would encourage her to make a project out of gathering all the information she had on her clan and recording whatever wasn’t already written down. Anything she asked of him he would do, and if she forgot to eat or shower or do her hair, he would remind her and ask what he could do to help her get back to her project faster. 

And so he did.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was sixteen, he finalized the seal he had made—with so much help from Kushina-chan and the nidaime’s forbidden jutsu and seal study scrolls they had stolen copies of—which would allow him to essentially teleport wherever they were attached to something. A few weeks later he figured out how to add a localized destruction clause to it which would allow the seal itself to self-destruct on his command, so no one could steal his technique. Kushina-chan told him that was in fact, a clever idea on his part.

If he was actually glowing like the sun after that, no one chose to mention it to him.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ still _ sixteen, he realised he was an idiot. He should have realised that he, first of all, could never  _ actually _ hide anything from Kushina. Second, that his crush on her hadn’t _ been _ just a crush for over a year now.

He was in love with Kushina, and  _ she _ knew it too.

Good thing the feeling was mutual, or he would have vapourised himself on the spot from embarrassment. He got punched in the gut and tackled into a hug when she dragged out of him just how long he’d been pining without saying a word.

(He’d never forget her aggressively concerned:  _ you matter too, you idiot. If you ever keep something like this from me again, I’ll be sure to be so kind to you that you’ll regret never having done it to yourself before. And yes! That  _ is _ a threat, _ as she held his face to look her in the eyes afterwards.)

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was seventeen, he joined ANBU to learn more about what it realistically took and looked like to be Hokage. Just because he and Kushina were dating didn’t mean they weren’t both still running for the hat and seat, so he had to find a way to get ahead of her  _ somehow.  _ (Though he could never be anything but awestruck by how charismatic and clever his girlfriend was. Never.)

Three days into the program he already hated how everything was run, and broke protocol by ranting to Kushina about it. She had that look on her face by the time he was done.

He couldn’t  _ wait _ to see what kind of hell his badass girlfriend was going to raise in the near future. (Or what kind of a personal hell Danzo was in for, whether the sandaime liked it or not.)

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was eighteen, he had regular, completely casual check-ins with every single ANBU member in the program and had invited every single one of them to meals and after-shift hangouts to relax and remember how to be human again. He  _ always _ took the extra time to sit down with the new recruits and anyone who seemed to be lagging or struggling in a completely confidential, judgement-free space, to help anyone having a hard time air their grievances and get advice if they wanted it.

In under a year, Namikaze Minato had unintentionally gained the undying loyalty of every single ANBU operative and—in ways he would never truly understand—had changed the world.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was nineteen, the world went to war. Although, for the most part, it was outside of their hidden village and he hadn’t been put on any kind of active duty regarding the regular bloodbaths the rumours had been already telling the war to be. He had yet to know he was going to be a major part of it.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was _still_ nineteen, he was assigned to be a jounin sensei to a team of newly graduated genin. Ten minutes in, he knew that he would protect these children with his fucking life. Outside of that, they would need a lot of time, energy, care, and support that he was more than willing to give each of them. Especially the _actual_ _ten-year-old_ that was supposedly meant to be taught how—and _expected_ —to murder people at least twice his age. Also apparently they’d all been told they were going to be fast-tracked in their training so they could help their parents and or fellow ninja fight in the war.

Fuck  _ that _ noise.

He found himself so busy rooting out the source of those particular ideas as well as training and teaching these kids he practically called his own, that when one evening Kushina pulled out a ring and proposed to him whilst sitting at Ichiraku Ramen, he could only stare at her dumbly and pull out the ring box he’d had hidden in a seal lining his hitai-ate for almost a year now. She laughed like a hyena before abruptly becoming deadly serious and asking how long he’d been sitting on his ass with that ring.

He told her he’d make a deal with her to swap rings first, and answer her question  _ after _ he paid for their ramen and were ready to part ways for the night.

She laughed herself breathless at her door when he told her, then kissed him like he was the only air she could breathe.

Minato decided he rather liked it when she called him future-husband.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was twenty, he became a frequently called upon combatant and mission leader in the war, which was the bad news. The good news was that none of his kids were being sent to the war's battlefields (and would not be any time soon so help him kami), he got to fight side by side with his fiancee and watch her kick-ass, _and_ his and Kushina’s entries in the bingo book went from ‘kill on sight’ to  _ ‘flee _ on sight’ so they could end most battles simply by showing up.

His genin kids passed their chunin exams in a brief window he was stationed back in the village and he couldn’t be more proud of them.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was twenty, one of his students, Uchiha Obito, went missing from within the village in the middle of a direct attack. Minato had been out on a mission at the time and hadn’t even known until he returned almost a week later.

Despite leaving no stone unturned and no potential leads left uninvestigated, he could not find him. Minato mourned the loss of his student with the rest of their team, and Kushina mourned with them. They never forgot.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ barely _ twenty-one, the war ended and he and Kushina officially announced the date of their wedding. The response to their having an official date blew them away, what with how many friends wanted to help plan and set things up for them, plus Minato’s two sisters kidnapping his future-wife to go dress shopping immediately. 

The Namikaze siblings later went to their parent’s graves to tell them the good news, dragging a softly smiling Kushina along with them.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was twenty-two, he and Kushina were summoned to the Hokage’s office and asked if either of them were still interested in wearing the hat.

Kushina said she and Minato were the best team the world had ever seen and nothing could ever change that. She didn’t care who officially wore the hat, but it was probably better if Minato wore it since she wanted to be a mother and being Hokage would make that difficult.

Minato kissed her on the cheek and said it was too bad since she’d be the better Hokage, but she was right that they were the best team in the history of teams and he was more than happy to take the hat instead to make it easier for her to be a mother in the future.

* * *

When Namikaze Minato was  _ still _ twenty-two, he had to pause and reboot his brain when he saw Kushina in her wedding gown. She was the most radiantly happy he had ever seen her, and he was absolutely certain that his heart was going to beat right out of his chest when she beamed at him.

He knew that he was the luckiest person in the world when she stood across from him and winked cheekily with a drawled,  _ well hey there, handsome. You sure clean up nice, dettebane! _

It took all his ANBU training not to swoon at her words alone.

His two students called him a disgusting sap and he couldn’t tell them in good conscience they were wrong.

* * *

When Uzumaki Minato was  _ just _ twenty-three, he was announced Hokage, officially. He took all of the notes he had made over the years studying the way that things were run and began making the changes he had dreamed of for so long. 

More assignments were made to teaching at the academy along with a better interview process and revision of the content taught to the students there. More specialized training was made available to jounin senseis for their students as well as a support system put in place so that the jounin could introduce other shinobi to their team and begin building stronger bonds and try their hand at networking from an earlier age. 

Kushina noted that this doubled as a way to help the genin teams adjust to having and trusting other mission leads if their sensei was requested or required to take a mission that they couldn’t avoid. (He loved how smart his wife was, she could kick his ass and outsmart him any day and it was amazing.)

He never forgot his ANBU and made sure to keep tabs on them all, asking for honest updates on their mental, physical, emotional, and social health frequently. When he had the time, he would ask around for any changes they would like to see to the program, realistic or not, and would figure out a way to implement those changes where he could.

His loyal ANBU never forgot.

* * *

When Uzumaki Minato was  _ still _ twenty-three, Kushina stormed into their house and told him she was pregnant. He had to run that sentence through his brain a few times before it really clicked.

_ I’m going to be a dad. _

_ I’m going to be a mother, dettebane! _

_ I’m going to be a father! _

_ We’re going to be parents! _

* * *

When Uzumaki Minato was twenty-four, he and Kushina named his jounin sensei Jiraiya as their child’s godfather. They officially adopted Hatake Kakashi, even if the kid insisted he was too old to be worrying about being adopted. Nohara Rin was adopted in all but name. He and Kushina found a suitable location for the birth to take place outside of the village, and a former kunoichi midwife they trusted to meet them there when Kushina went into labour. They made sure to write letters and copy all of Kushina’s Uzumaki scrolls to seal in a separate scroll and give to Kakashi, just in case.

They were ninja, not irrational. Though they still hoped for the best.

Naruto was born exactly on his due date and Minato loved him with every fibre of his being. Even through the terror and worry for both their baby and Kushina he felt during the delivery (since both of his sisters had died of complications to their pregnancies in the two years after he and Kushina had been married), Naruto’s crying arrival into the world was the most perfect event Minato had ever had the honour to be a part of. For a few short minutes, absolutely everything was right with the world as he handed off his newborn son to his wife.

Then those few precious moments ended and they were attacked, the Kyuubi no Kitsune—whom Kushina had assured him was just as desperately fighting to keep the seal intact as they were—was somehow released by a masked man and went on a  _ rampage _ .

Just like that, everything right with his world was shattered. Minato only had a moment to look back at his wife and son, before setting out to defend the village and hopefully, take down the masked man who seemed set to destroy everything Minato loved in the world.

* * *

When Uzumaki Minato was twenty-four, he died with his wife, sealing a worryingly unnaturally enraged Kyuubi no Kitsune into their newborn son, using the seal he had developed with his wife and the Kyuubi himself to do so.

His world had completely shattered around him save for one thing.

Their son, Uzumaki Naruto, was going to be a hero. But most importantly, he was going to  _ survive _ with a brother, a sister, and a godfather.

Uzumaki Minato could die, not happy, but appeased with that knowledge.

And so he did.

And the ANBU never forgot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please ask me any questions you have or drop any thoughts you just can't contain in a comment if you're feeling up to it.
> 
> Stay safe and keep your wits about you out there! 
> 
> With love,  
> pS


End file.
